Wow, I love the concept already! Can the PC try to help get the female lead and the Crown Prince together? I think it’ll be funny if she tried to matchmake them lol.
Alternately, can the PC try to get the Crown Prince to like them maybe even love them?
I love the idea of her choosing her outfits and I love the stats you have planned.
Anyway, I really love your project so far. I’ll be cheering for your success!
Fun fact that I found encouraging: the average Harlequin romance novel (however you feel about them) is ~60K.
I’ve written 60K (last I checked). My wordcount increases slowly, especially (it seems) in comparison to others’ and I often find myself feeling excited every time I hit a little milestone only to immediately be disappointed in myself afterward because it seems like so little in comparison to the other generally huge WiPs and completed works around. And yet. I’ve written the same amount of words as the average Harlequin romance. Actual books.
Idk, it’s just a good reminder that “comparison is the thief of joy” often holds true and that perspective is a hell of a thing. Maybe it will also make any “small progress” homies feel better tonight too. 
On the subject of reader expectations, just yesterday I quit reading a perfectly good game, which under different circumstances I might’ve enjoyed a lot, but my mood lately just isn’t right for it. I clashed hard with a character whom the writer obviously expected to be likable. The blurb looked very promising, even though the genre isn’t my usual one, and I was curious.
Based on the stats and the blurb, I’m guessing there are plot developments later on that I would have enjoyed, but I just couldn’t get past that first encounter. Again, for mostly personal reasons, which is why I’m not naming the game in question.
My take on this is generally “As much as you want”, “When you ignore player choices”, and “Whenever you want.”
RPGs, including IF, are a form of cooperative fiction, and all forms of cooperative fiction require the player to engage with the story presented. When you play the game you have to accept that your character is going to do certain things because the story demands them. That’s just how games work.
There is, imo, no use in changing your story for the kind of player who goes “well in my headcanon my character would never get involved with this kind of thing” because that player is refusing to keep with their end of the deal. Your job is to tell the story, their job is to go along with the story. Make accommodations, sure, where it won’t change the story. Maybe they do the thing but they spend the rest of the game being resentful they were forced into it. That’s fine. But going out of your way to cater to “Actually, my MC would never participate in a heist because blah blah blah blah” when the story demands a casino robbery? That way lies madness.
As for railroading, I think that’s pretty difficult in this kind of game because it is, of necessity, already on rails. Railroading in tabletop is when you just force the players down a certain route, but in IF you’re already locked into the routes in the game. The only thing I could think of that would possibly count is if you give me a choice and then blatantly ignore that choice for no reason.
It is curious how social advance the way we speak and how verbs are perceived.
My dad is now just retired, it was since high school in labor unions when still illegal here pro lgtbq+ rights in 70’s 80’s while rising a kid as single parent. A boss.
Still, he find himself trying to change all that aggressive language that was totally common in Spanish. Many old generations of activists have difficulty accessing to why newbies for them shouting angryly at them for what they have been saying all their life and while being persecuted.
This come to please, try be nice with people that os clearly not trolling and they are clearly from old generation. Because now my dad is afraid of sharing memes of cats with lgtbq flags because he used a wording that now can be slightly off in the lasrt to years or so and only in Usa.
I loved Tin Star’s approach to the early dead end (for someone uninterested in playing through the story). It made sense within the context (you are legally declared dead, and Marshal James offers you tin (star, along with a new identity) or lead), and it also helps that a: there are checkpoints, b: all the dead ends make sense within the story (don’t play with explosives if you don’t know what you’re doing, etc.), c: you get many chances to avoid the early dead end in the conversation, and d: if you only go along with Marshal James because you don’t want to die, you can get your vengeance on him and then some. I think it’s worth playing the early dead end at least once.
However, I think that Tin Star is the exception that proves the rule, in case of early game ends because the player doesn’t want to play the story.
It also happens so early that replaying up to that point isn’t much of a chore.
I don’t think early ending would be required for people who don’t actually want to play the story though? They can just quit playing.
These are all great thoughts on the nature of cooperative fiction! I really like that term, think I’ll start using it.
Moonrise is a Hosted Game and also has dead ends waaaaay sooner than 15% of the way to the end. My cousin described it was “rogue-lite.” The game is short enough that if you do die, it’s easy to get back to where you were, but you can get killed 3 separate times. The death screen is ripped right from Legend of Zelda because I’m very creative. 
In tonight’s news, I’m trying to decide if a character is a shapeshifter or just otherwise can breathe underwater (while trying to keep it a secret in either case).
This amused me today:
When I was coming up with a title for Honor Bound, I spent a while circling around words and phrases that kept being too much like Call of Duty or similar.
How do you all come up with your game titles? Have you ever changed one mid-project?
Have I mentioned my favouritest game ever is Book of Hours, which while aptly and funnily named, it’s also unfortunately named because every time I google it I have to filter through a bunch of medieval christian stuff?
I may or may not be guilty of picking a single word out of a dictionary, but like… Come on! “Saturnine” is such a cool word, and it has so many meanings to play around with. I didn’t set my story on a saturnine, saturnine, saturnine station “Saturn Nine” inhabitated by nine Saturnians just to then not advertise that fact.
Diaspora is definitely guilty of this, but it was only ever meant to be a working title, so we picked something that basically just… stated what the game was about. I think at this point it’s been named that for so long that changing it would be counterproductive, but I’d definitely choose something different if I were going back and doing it all over again.
Fields of Asphodel is a physical location in the game, and also makes the overall setting and conventions (Greek mythology) obvious to people with a little bit of knowledge in the area. I like to think it’s reasonably catchy even for those that don’t, and pleasantly searching just for the title does bring up the game itself within the first three google results, so I’d say that was more effective overall.
My next project (after FoA’s sequel) is likely to be called Skyknights of Soshar. I’m not totally sold on it yet, but I think it does a pretty decent job conveying the genre (high fantasy), and maybe something about the central premise (the PC is a knight that rides a drake instead of a horse). I’m not sure about including the name of a fictional empire in the title, but on the other hand I’m not sure how well Skyknight would stand on its own. (If anyone has an opinion on this, I’d be interested to hear it.)
I could stand to be a little more deliberate about these things, I think, but I do suspect I’ve gotten a bit better with time.
With very much difficulty.
Seriously. I’m still working on my working titles.
My mind immediately thought of: Dragonriders of Pern when I read Skyknights of Soshar, so you hit your mark for me, without issue.
I’m getting more steampunk than high fantasy vibes from Skyknights, but I’m also lowkey obsessed with airplanes, so maybe that’s just me.
Addendum on making titles: I relish on making wordplays with them, but unfortunately that works better in Finnish than English, since I’m not fluent enough in English to do good wordplay. 
I do have a soft spot for “Snow White Blood” though.
Patchwerks came about in discussion with trusted colleagues, and I changed it from Patchworks to Patchwerks because Google-search led to quilting companies with the original spelling, which is not my targeted audience.
Through the Twisting Glass came to me as I was writing my Halloween Jam entry because it is a tribute to Through the Looking Glass and fit the theme and subject of the entry quite well.
My working titles are chosen as I write and ponder the narrative I am writing.
I prefer Skyknights of Soshar to just Skyknight because for me, the “of Soshar” establishes a fantasy setting whereas just Skyknight or Skyknights could be anything from epic fantasy to steampunk to superheroes 
I don’t think I really have a process, I just keep going through ideas until something seems to fit, and try not to overthink it too much. I have changed titles mid project as needed, but thankfully, I’ve never done it with a project that I’ve shared with people.
I have considered changing the title of my current WIP, Guardian of Time into something I can make an acronym with because right now it would be GOT, and I’m not trying to compete with Game of Thrones here. Ultimately, I decided having a acronym isn’t worth the confusion of changing the title.
I think that name sounds really cool, but I do think it sounds more like the name of a series than a stand alone. (That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still work, I would definitely check out a project with that title. I just wanted to share my impression of it.)
This advice makes sense, but also feels like an uphill battle. I think consistent branding on multiple relevant platforms is probably better than worrying about what Google and its ilk come up with these days.
I have to say that though, because my working title is from mythology and thus has several millenia of search results to beat. But then, I just now also learned Honor Bound is a series of WW2 books and a movie so… 
